Monster In His Head
by S. Cordell
Summary: It took Severus a long time to get to get to the point where he was compelled to join his fellow Slytherins in becoming a Death Eater. Not even Lily Evans understood Severus' childhood on Spinner's End. Chapters of Severus's past interspersed with the story of his initiation into the Death Eaters. TW: Domestic Abuse.


**A/N: Quickly, a domestic abuse trigger warning for this whole story! Just a heads up. Thank you guys for reading! -SC**

When he was three, Severus woke from a nap to see his mother standing in the kitchen alone. Her back was to him, and at first he thought she was only making lunch. Before he could run into the kitchen and ask what she was making, he saw something. The way she bent over the counter, like she needed it to support her. Her mouth was bent tight into a thin line; the smile that usually shone from her face was gone. Her eyes were closed. "Mummy?" he asked, his voice unusually small. This scene had worried him.

In less than a second, he saw his mother transform completely. She bent down to hug him, a fake smile in her eyes and on her lips. "Well look who's awake!" she laughed. Toddlers can't tell the difference, a fake smile from a real one. Severus soon forgot that he had seen his mother sad.

But it was only four years later when Severus came home from Primary school early. It had started to snow particularly hard, and the teachers had decided an early release would be best. He walked home alone, and let himself in the front door. Nobody was home, which was odd. Severus knew his mother didn't work, and Tuesdays were supposed to be his father's day off. With his green backpack still securely over his shoulders, Severus checked every room in the house for his parents before looking in the garage for his father's car. It was gone, too. Finally he sat in the living room on the couch. It was thinly padded, with several odd colored patches sewn on. That couch had been in the small house on Spinner's End for as long as Severus could remember. In fact, all of the furniture in that small house was old and worn down.

It would have been easy for him to turn on the television and wait for his mother to get home. But Severus had never been in this situation before. Being at home alone scared him. In fact, he was paralyzed. He couldn't imagine a future where he parents came home. To him, they were gone, and he would have to figure out how to live on his own. So Severus sat on the couch alone. When it got dark outside, he neglected to turn on the lights. Hours passed by and he still sat, his finger absentmindedly running over one of the seams on the couch.

Finally, at nine o clock, the front door swung open. Tobias Snape switched the lights on and froze at the sight of his son. "Shit," he said, not-so-quietly. He looked annoyed and tired, with dark circles under his eyes. "Eileen, get in here," he said to his wife, behind him.

Unfortunately, Severus was still frozen. It wasn't until his mother wedged her way in the door behind her husband that he got the courage to stand. He expected her to stretch her arms out for a hug. Instead, he was met with one arm in a sling and her chest and face littered with bruises. This caused him to hesitate, but it only took a slight nod from his mother and another false smile for him to run to her. Like before, he couldn't tell the difference between his mother's brave face and her real one.

By the time Severus turned nine years old, he had started to enjoy reading. As much as Tobias tried to encourage him to participate in sports with other children, he refused to go outside. The other kids didn't like him much, and in turn he didn't like them. Plus, the books his mother bought for him from the sale bins reminded him of the stories she used to tell him about her days at the wizard school he would soon go to.

Interestingly, for nine years, Severus had managed to learn very little about his father. He knew that sometimes he shouted and sometimes he drank. He knew that he really liked to fall asleep in the den, watching television. But Severus didn't understand how mad Tobias got when Eileen Snape didn't do the laundry "right" or how mad he got when she tried to use magic to make dinner. It wasn't until he turned nine and refused to go outside to play that he learned these things. Because that's when Tobias started to get mad at him, too.

When he was nine, Severus learned the difference between a real smile and a fake smile.


End file.
